YOUNGSTOWN — Local defense attorney Mark Lavelle took the witness stand Thursday to serve as an expert witness in a hearing to determine whether prison inmate Chaz Bunch received ineffective assistance of counsel during his 2002 rape and kidnapping trial.

Bunch, 38, is serving a 49-year prison sentence after being convicted of aggravated robbery, kidnapping, three counts of rape and gun specifications in the kidnapping and rape of a 22-year-old Youngstown State University student Aug. 21, 2001.

The attack started just as the woman arrived to work the midnight shift at a group home on Detroit Avenue.

The Ohio Supreme Court ordered Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to hold the hearing. The decision came after Bunch’s attorneys argued in an appeals case that the outcome of Bunch’s trial could have been different had his trial attorney called an expert witness to challenge the victim’s delayed identification of Bunch as one of her attackers.

Bunch’s attorney was Dennis DiMartino, who testified during an earlier part of the hearing in September.

Lavelle, who was not part of the trial, testified for more than an hour Thursday, saying after reading all of the transcripts of Bunch’s trial and other relevant rulings and documents, “I would have done things differently, perhaps, but I don’t know that DiMartino’s efforts fell below the prevailing standards as it relates to providing representation.”

Lavelle said it is limiting to be able only to review transcripts because it does not give a flavor of how the jury was reacting to the testimony, but he found that DiMartino “was reasonably effective in his presentation or his examination of state witnesses.”

Lavelle said he would not have put an expert witness on the stand to testify the victim had erred in her identification of Bunch as one of the men who raped her. Instead, it would have been more effective to elicit that type of testimony in cross examination of the Youngstown police detective working on the case.

He noted the victim was “so remarkably clear as it relates to the identity of the three defendants that she did identify, immediately, she was able to identify the vehicle’s license plate … that she had some description of the clothing,” Lavelle said.

“I would be hard pressed to sell to the jury that her memory was so spot on as it relates to those items and yet when it comes to this particular identification it is somehow mistaken,” he said.

However, because the victim did not identify Bunch “quickly and confidently” from a photo lineup like she did the three other defendants, he “would have tried to expose that” during questioning of witnesses, Lavelle said. The victim identified Bunch from a newspaper article regarding Bunch being a suspect about two weeks after the rapes, according to court documents.

Bunch’s attorney Joe Patituce of Strongsville asked Lavelle about DiMartino’s work during jury selection, and Lavelle said, based on the limited information he got from the “cold hard transcript, I don’t know that (DiMartino’s work during jury selection) was very engaging.”

Patituce asked Lavelle about the fact the DNA that was collected in the case excluded Bunch as having contributed any of it.

“Can you explain why we should have confidence in the outcome here when Dennis DiMartino never used that DNA exclusion, either with the victim directly or with the detective at the end of the case?” Patituce asked.

“I don’t know what (DiMartino’s) thinking on the subject was, whether he thought the evidence was sufficiently presented in and of itself. I would have hit that very hard in cross examination of the police investigator,” Lavelle said.

Lavelle said DiMartino tried to raise the issue of the victim not correctly identifying Bunch through his questioning of the victim. Lavelle said DiMartino suggested during her testimony that “her memory may have faded” and raised the issue of her identifying Bunch out of the newspaper instead of a photo lineup.

Lavelle said he thinks DiMartino tried to address issues such as the victim’s delayed identification of Bunch, “but he didn’t get what he wanted from the cross examination of the victim.”

Sweeney gave both sides until Jan. 30 to file written post-hearing briefs in the case, and she will rule on the matter later.